One of the few facts people in the music industry can agree on is that giant retailer Wal-Mart is the leading seller of music in the United States: despite lackluster results from its online music retailing efforts, the chain manages to move enough audio CDs—"unprotected masters" in the parlance of the music biz—to make it the indisputable retail leader. That’s why record labels will actually edit material so Wal-Mart buyers find it acceptable for sale in their stores.
But it’s surely a sign of the times when Apple’s iTunes store can’ claim the number 2 spot amongst U.S. music retailers. According to figures just released in the NPD Group‘s MusicWatch survey, iTunes rang in as the second largest music retailer during 2007, assuming every 12 individual tracks sold is equivalent to a single CD. iTunes has sold more than 4 billion tracks to date, and says it sold more than 20 million songs on Christmas day alone.
"We’d like to thank the over 50 million music lovers who have helped the iTunes Store reach this incredible milestone," said Apple’s iTunes VP Eddy Cue, in a statement. "We continue to add great new features like iTunes Movie Rentals to give our customers even more reason to love iTunes."
Of course, one might wonder about the relationship between Wal-Mart and NPD: the retailer recently named NPD its "syndicated supplier of the year" for implementing a customer tracking service for Wal-Mart and Sam’s Clubs that lets vendors and retailers peer more deeply into the activity of Wal-Mart’s customers. "The development and launch of these products has been a milestone for NPD," said NPD’s Wal-Mart team leader Paul Cantrell. "We are committed to continued teamwork with Wal-Mart and their vendor teams to provide additional insights to help drive their business success."
